LogFAQs > #949811814

#59. Papers, Please (PC, 2013)
Even more in the mold of sit down and thinky kind of games, as apparently this is a commonly recurring thing on my lists. Papers, Please is a game where you play as a border patrol agent for a fictional country going through some political strife. Your only job is to check everyone's passport, and reject those who do not fit the criteria laid out. It's a shitty job and your boss is tough on you and your family is struggling and it's a little real, but it somehow manages to squeeze all this in over a very basic 3 screen game where the only gameplay is checking passports. Sometimes people will bribe you to let you in with their bad passports, or you might choose to side with the odd cult that seems to be at hand with wanting some power of their own, oryou might just need to help out someone who is really in need. The decisions of your moral choices ultimately affect how much you make and are able to support your family, since you are penalized for repeated allowing in of people who shouldn't, but opens up different story progressions... so it basically comes down to a moral choice where you are dealing with the outfall of your choices.

The way it integrates the story is pretty neat, and thats a big part of why I like it, but really, I just think the gameplay is actually REALLY compelling. I was more interested in just being right about who to let in or not, a bit more than the moral choices. Or in the case of the cult, solving their puzzles as they can get a bit complex along the way (it can be as simple as making sure to let in a person with a specific name, or using a decoding device for further instruction on what to do). The rules for allowing people in or not though eventually start building up more and more and more, and by the end there are so many different documents that are needed, and different types of documents depending on various things like where the person is from or why they're emmigrating, and expiration dates to check, interrogating them if there's an error and allowing for corrections, scanning them for anyweapons, making sure their fakey sounding city matches up with their fakey sounding country using your encyclopedia, that their birthday is right, that their documents don't have a forged seal,there's just so much to remember but you have all the documents and info you need in front of you as you click and drag everything around your workplace. The game eventually escalates with its plot also in what other tasks befall you over the course of the game that I won't give away if you haven't played. There are also some recurring characters you meet with along the way who have their own plotlines that eventually get resolved, and the way that is worked into the gameplay is well done too.

But yeah, the thrill of trying to balance 50 rule sets at once and moving all these documents around you screen and just verifying everything for accuracy just somehow has this incredible thrilling appeal to it (the fact it's all under a time limit is crucial), and giving the passport that final stamp of Accept or Reject feels really good, especially when you can point out an error and give it back to the person like hey this passport is shit! there's just something about it.

So when I say this game is boring, it's about doing one of the most boring jobs you could imagine. Made as exciting as possible. I think this is another game I could definitely have higher on my list, as I write about it!



Next up: This is the only game that appears twice on my list...in a manner of speaking.


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