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STEPHEN THOMPSON, HOST:
This summer, NPR asked some of its staff and contributors a simple question - what are the best video games of 2022 so far? Now we've got their answers, so it's time to explore some of the favorite picks from epic blockbusters to indie games that might just win your heart. I'm Stephen Thompson. And today we are recommending some games we love on POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR.
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THOMPSON: Joining me today is NPR's Here & Now producer James Mastromarino. Hey, James.
JAMES MASTROMARINO, BYLINE: Hi. Thanks for having me.
THOMPSON: It is a pleasure. So some of us at NPR are hardcore gamers. Some of us dip in and out every now and then. Some of us - like me, for example - are horrible at any video game made after 1983. But we did want to assemble some useful recommendations for new games people will love. Now, James, you play a lot of games made after 1983, and you worked on a project NPR put together in which NPR staff and contributors picked their favorite games of this year so far. Tell me a little more about the survey itself.
MASTROMARINO: Yeah. So we just, as you mentioned, asked a very simple question - what games have you enjoyed this year? People could respond as many times as they wanted to, and this really evolved out of the NPR gamer Slack, which has over a hundred people.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
MASTROMARINO: They range from interns to engineers to people who work in audience relations. So it's really a diverse list that represents everyone who games at NPR that I could at least track down and harass to fill out the survey.
THOMPSON: Nice. Let's get to your first pick.
MASTROMARINO: Yeah. So the first pick has to be "Elden Ring." It was by far the most talked-about game on this list. And I think that's for a number of reasons. It's from a Japanese developer that made this cult classic series called "Dark Souls." It's an incredibly popular series, especially with video game critics and designers.
THOMPSON: (Laughter) Yes.
MASTROMARINO: And it's noted for being tough as nails, incredibly beautiful, exquisitely crafted. And for this game, "Elden Ring," they took that model, and they blew it up to this big open world that you can explore, essentially, no-holds-barred. And they got a little author you may have heard of named George R.R. Martin to help write some of the lore. But what I found out through this project is people who had never played any of this developer's games - who were well aware of the reputation they have for attracting, like, these grizzled hardcore gamers that love to brag about how they can do things by themselves...
THOMPSON: (Laughter). Yeah.
MASTROMARINO: ...It attracted people who are much more casual than that because it is, for all of the hostility of this huge world, more approachable than these games have ever been. So you fight dragons, giants, other monsters. You can summon other creatures to aid you - almost like Pokemon, actually. You can level them up.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
MASTROMARINO: And it can make fights that were impossible seem trivial.
THOMPSON: Right.
MASTROMARINO: And then, above all, you can read messages from other players in their own worlds that will give you hints or at least try to amuse you or sometimes distract you. You can see these little ghosts of other players as you're playing kind of flit in and out to remind you that there's other people in the world. And you can even summon them into your game. So you can call somebody in who can help you out at any point, essentially. And I think all of this is best epitomized by this amazing boss battle called General Radahn. He's got a hype man who will even tell you about the fight that you're about to do.
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SHANE ATTWOOLL: (As Jerren) Champions, prepare for battle. Defeat the general, claim glory and grab that great rune - a celebration of war, the Radahn festival.
MASTROMARINO: In the fight, not only are you trying to best it by yourself, you have a whole suite of characters who can help you. You've got a talking ceramic pot with arms and legs.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
MASTROMARINO: You have a wolf man, a coward who you can summon in, and then he'll immediately just run away (laughter). And you can, of course, summon other players to the fight. So it really does feel like this strangely inclusive, really open-armed approach. And I don't think "Elden Ring" is ever better than in a moment like that - whereas at once difficult, approachable, goofy and epic.
THOMPSON: Would you say this is a game that is appropriate for entry-level gamers, or is this one that you have to work your way up to?
MASTROMARINO: You might want to work your way up. But the way that I would recommend it is if you can have a guide - somebody who knows the terrain and can walk you through it - it has really robust multiplayer functionality. It's available on everything but the Nintendo Switch, essentially.
THOMPSON: So Steam, PS5, Xbox.
MASTROMARINO: Steam, PlayStation 5 - and PlayStation 4 - Xbox. It's incredible, just the range of experiences you can get from this thing, even if it looks really intimidating on the box.
THOMPSON: All right. Give me another pick.
MASTROMARINO: I thought I'd bring "Neon White" to your attention. It's by the same developer of "Donut County" - which is a game that I know you have played.
THOMPSON: I love "Donut County."
MASTROMARINO: Yeah, it's Ben Esposito. It's a really unusual mix of genres. The premise is that your character has died and gone to hell, but you've been plucked out by so-called believers in heaven to do their dirty work for them. Then you'll get a spot into heaven. It's really unusual.
The gameplay is that you're running along these really beautiful, minimalist courses through the clouds with all sorts of alabaster architecture and spires. There are these demons that come in various shapes and sizes that you can shoot with these guns that you'll pick up throughout the level. And then you can also discard the guns to have some sort of cool parkour ability. It could be a double jump or a dash or a hook shot, for example. And the goal is to complete each level as quickly as you can. It also has this really wicked soundtrack by a digital hardcore band called Machine Girl that sort of underpins exactly how you feel when playing this game. It's frenetic and wild.
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MACHINE GIRL: Heaven is a trip.
MASTROMARINO: It also tells the story - through this sort of anime-style art - of the main character, Neon White and other people - these so-called Neons, that are also competing - that were from his crew in life. So you can interact with them. You can find gifts in the level that will increase your relationship level with them, which is very video game-y. But nonetheless, you'll uncover what it is that they actually did, how they ended up where they are and uncover what's really going on in this place that bills itself as heaven but otherwise seems pretty devilish.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
MASTROMARINO: That's "Neon White" on Steam and Nintendo Switch.
THOMPSON: Great. All right. Give me another pick.
MASTROMARINO: Well, we have to talk about "Pokemon Legends: Arceus." I think this is the most innovative Pokemon game they've put out in years - perhaps since "Pokemon Go" - because it takes what was a pretty tired formula and, kind of like how "Elden Ring" reinvented itself by going big, drops you into this huge open world. So you can wander around and actually see Pokemon in the environment with you. You can sneak up on them and throw a Poke Ball to try and catch them or throw some - one of your own Pokemon at them to do battle with them. It really immerses you - that's something that our contributor Sabrina Mohsenin talked about - that finally you feel like you're living with Pokemon. And isn't that the whole point?
And it does have a somewhat slow start because despite its wild premise, where you're sent back in time to an era when people in this world didn't interact with these creatures, you - being a player character - know that you can actually tame them and befriend them and uncover this journey. And it really resonated with people, I think, because they mixed up the formula in exactly the right ways that the series needed to.
THOMPSON: Yeah. I mean, those games always seem to have, like, a really interesting mix of battles and kind of just hanging out.
MASTROMARINO: Yeah.
THOMPSON: I played some "Pokemon Snap," where your job is just to go around taking pictures of Pokemon, and it is strangely soothing. I also - we won't even get into "Pokemon Go," which has consumed my entire life for the last six years (laughter).
MASTROMARINO: Yeah, exactly.
THOMPSON: Nice. All right. That's "Pokemon Legends: Arceus." That came out back in January. That's on Switch. Give me another pick.
MASTROMARINO: "Citizen Sleeper," I bring to your attention. You play an android that has escaped from corporate ownership and fled to this far-flung space station, free from any corporate control in this sort of hyper-capitalist space dystopia. Think of it as - it's "Blade Runner," but you're the replicant.
THOMPSON: OK.
MASTROMARINO: So you have to dodge bounty hunters. You have to figure out how to get this important medicine to keep your body working that was, of course, monopolized by the corporations so that they would - could keep you under their control. And you have to just find where to live day to day. It's also inspired by tabletop RPGs. So at the beginning of each period of time, the game will roll six-sided dice for you, and then you can use those values to go to different locations and perform different tasks.
But it does a really good job of making you feel desperate at the beginning, where you're just cobbling together a life and that you're hounded at every turn, to one where you actually can build your own life, free from this kind of capitalist nightmare that you were a part of. And it really left me pondering a lot of things because it pertains - even though it's in the far future, in space - it pertains to a lot of questions people today are grappling with. You know, how do you pay the bills? How do you get health care? How do you be the person that you want to be, free of the structures that might be trying to pin you down?
THOMPSON: I don't know if that sounds escapist enough for me.
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THOMPSON: I don't know if how do you expect to pay the bills is a question I want to ponder while playing a video game.
MASTROMARINO: It may be uncomfortably close to home, but it's also got space mobsters and sentient plants...
THOMPSON: (Laughter) Fair enough.
MASTROMARINO: ...Networks and all sorts of funky things you can encounter.
THOMPSON: Nice. All right, so that's "Citizen Sleeper." That's on Steam, PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch and Xbox
MASTROMARINO: It could run on almost anything, like, maybe even like a TI-84 or something.
THOMPSON: (Laughter) I've got a Commodore 64 in my basement.
MASTROMARINO: (Laughter).
THOMPSON: Give me one last pick.
MASTROMARINO: Yeah. So "Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe." It's a follow-up to a 2013 game called "The Stanley Parable." And this game is itself a commentary on sequels and remasters and remakes. It has a central narrator. And in the very beginning of the game, he's infuriated by the slapdash way that this beloved 2013 game was remade.
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KEVAN BRIGHTING: (As the Narrator) This is what happens when greedy video game developers, with no respect for their fan base, rush a cheap expansion to market for no reason other than to make an easy dollar. I'm infuriated, and I'm offended. And I intend to find these people on Twitter and hold them personally accountable.
THOMPSON: Nice.
MASTROMARINO: You play a character named Stanley who has woken up from his day job at an office, where he comes in every day and just presses buttons in the order that a screen tells him to, decides to get up, walk around. It's completely desolate, just these very corporate corridors. And you have a narrator in your ear narrating exactly what you're doing and commenting as you go. That can sound so wry to the point of being annoying, but "Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe" takes this concept and just keeps on running with it further and further past where you think it was going to go.
THOMPSON: Interesting.
MASTROMARINO: So it's commenting on making choices in games and how, ultimately, all choices are fabricated by a designer, right? But then in this remake, it's also talking about the original game and if anything could approach that, how you revise it, how you respond to what your critics would say in the game. There's another section where the narrator gets very upset because he's encountered a room that he thought didn't exist that is full of negative user reviews.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
MASTROMARINO: And then he'll read them and comment upon them. They're actual reviews that the developers found.
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BRIGHTING: (As the Narrator) The narrator is obnoxious and unfunny, with his humor and dialogue proving to be more irritating than entertaining. Unfunny? I'm not trying to be funny. I'm trying to make a serious work of art...
MASTROMARINO: And then it continues to spiral into these very surreal odds and ends where it's constantly asking you to play with it, to play with the interface, to try different things out. And there's no linear path through the game. You simply experience it. You'll come to various endings, and then it will start over. And you can do something new and find something else out as you go. It is constantly engaging. It's asking a lot of you as a player, but it's very hard to put down.
THOMPSON: So that's "The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe." That's on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. It's been a good year for video games.
MASTROMARINO: I think it has been. It's been particularly busy at the start of the year. That was the constant refrain you heard from folks is because "Elden Ring," "Horizon Forbidden West," "Dying Light 2" - these are all massively anticipated games that all came out in February. And we've also had just a string of amazing indie games that have kept up right till now.
THOMPSON: And with many more to come.
MASTROMARINO: That's right.
THOMPSON: All right. Well, if you want to discover even more games that NPR has loved so far this year, you can find the full list at Join the Game - NPR's column on games and gaming culture - at npr.org. That brings us to the end of our show. Thank you, James Mastromarino for being here.
MASTROMARINO: Thank you.
THOMPSON: This episode was produced by Rommel Wood and edited by Mike Katzif and Jessica Reedy. Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all tomorrow.
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