LogFAQs > #966717962

#28: Among Us

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/4/3/AAA-H0AADeWX.jpg

I brought this upon myself. I absolutely did not have to talk about Among Us on this list. I could have easily just said "well, it came out in 2018, so obviously it doesn't belong on this list" and you'd all go "yeah, makes sense, it did come out in 2018." There was no need to twist my own rules into a knot to make it eligible. Some people will even now probably cry foul at its inclusion on the list, despite the fact that I said quite explicitly that I might carve out exceptions like this one! All for the sake of this obnoxiously enormous cultural phenomenon that everyone's already heard of. I had to ask myself; do I really have anything new to say about Among Us? And it turns out the answer is, damn right I do. I have to talk about Among Us.

I'm putting this down as a 2020 game because, despite coming out in 2018, this game didn't *truly* exist until 2020. Sure, you could have played it in 2018, if you had heard of it, but it would have been a small player base. You might have to wait to get into a game, and forget about having a large friend group who all owns the game. Then the pandemic happened, some really popular streamers played it, and it became the next Fortnite, and that made Among Us actually come alive as it is today, and while that's the only reason I've ever even actually played it, I also fear that it might be breeding some resentment. I get it, to some extent. Among Us has become the Gen Z version of Facebook Minion memes. Politicians are playing it on stream. It's everywhere, and anything that is everywhere is going to become annoying by default. (I'm still upset that this happened to Undertale.)

Put all of the cultural phenomenon stuff aside for a second. Imagine a world where Among Us isn't an annoying, pervasive meme, just a fun little indie game about some space guys who sometimes stab each other. I wanted to talk about Among Us because it is a Good Game, Actually.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/4/4/AAA-H0AADeWY.jpg

You're reading this on Board 8, so chances are I do not need to re-acquaint you with the game of mafia. I like mafia a lot. I enjoy the art of spinning a well-told lie and making others believe it, and I love the tactics of banding together as a group to root out those lies even as the group is being actively sabotaged from within. I also hate mafia a lot. Forum games are absolutely soul-draining and get too personal, and at the end of the day, even at its best, mafia is just people arguing back and forth at each other until someone cracks.

Among Us kind of fixes these problems. First of all, Among Us keeps things nice and brief. Games don't overstay their welcome in length - they take just long enough for a few interesting things to happen, and then it wraps up. Things stay pretty chill, from what I've seen; you'll get a few decent debates but for the most part when I play Among Us it's never too try-hardy; everyone kind of embraces the spirit of wanting a fast and loose mafia-like game, because the game is just more fun that way. Your mileage may vary, of course.

But for me, Among Us's real innovation to the social deception landscape is the fact that it all takes place within a physical arena where you need to actually do stuff. The weakness of mafia, in my opinion, is the limitations within which you can create a cover story for yourself and explain your own actions. All you're actually doing as mafia is saying privately who you want to kill and that's it, and town has a few other night actions that they can throw around, but they tend to be pretty binary. I've always wanted a game like mafia where town has to do actual tasks that the mafia can sabotage, where mafia has to make an actual PLAN for how they're going to get the kill done and needs to cover their tracks successfully.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/4/5/AAA-H0AADeWZ.jpg

Among Us delivers on this front. Doing tasks, as town, is simple but gives every player something that they can focus on doing that isn't just arguing back and forth. It avoids the 'day 1' problem that mafia has by creating circumstances for an interesting mystery from the word go. It makes for a world where the mafia can immediately start making schemes rather than just lying low and trying not to get noticed. It allows for so many more possibilities of what could possibly happen.

I've played a fair bit of Among Us, but I haven't really gotten addicted to it. I prefer to play it with friends when I get the opportunity, and the idea of playing it with randos doesn't interest me even though the game is a lot more chill than mafia. But I also don't play it enough with my friends because I'm very bad at socializing and I always end up making excuses not to play games with friends. So, I don't know if the best opportunities to play Among Us have passed me by, but it seems like a game that's going to be around in one form or another for a while. And now every time there's a new social deception game, everyone's going to compare it to Among Us now instead of mafia. Sigh.

(By the way, you're not gonna fucking believe this, but this was the hardest game to get useable screenshots of from google image search so far. Absolutely infuriating.)

Next up: By some completely insane coincidence, the Greek god Charon is a notable character in four different games in my top 50. Four! I guess the pandemic's got people thinking about mortality or SOMETHING. Anyway this is one of them.