#BEST SIMULATION GAMES XBOX SERIES X SIMULATOR#
But even if the walking simulator were to step off a cliff, we would still have some of the best experiences that this generation has seen.Star Citizen is a dynamic, rich, complex and exciting universe that we invite you to discover through stories and news published since the beginning of the game by CIG. Hopefully there is still a future for the walking simulator, particularly as some of the developers have publicly turned their backs on the genre (The Chinese Room, reconsider!). If you haven’t played it yet, clear four hours and enjoy. Firewatch, like Gone Home before it, is perfect – or as negligibly close to perfection that I won’t bother quibbling. Like many of the games here, there is a playful poking of various genres until the game finally settles on one, and the result couldn’t have been anything else. If walking simulators are about the views, then Firewatch has got your back.īut if walking sims are instead about the journey, then Firewatch has got your back too. The forest is somewhat explorable (some might say that breaks the walking sim rule), and that means you can bask in that gorgeousness. Your shared loneliness will bring you to some poignant places.Īnd gosh, Firewatch is gorgeous. Instead, you all keep contact by radio and form a bond with one in particular – Delilah. You aren’t the only one with this job, as other fire towers are scattered through the forest, but you will never physically encounter them. You play as Henry, employed for a summer to man a fire tower in Wyoming, watching the horizon for suspicious activity and, well, fires. There’s something about the inability to look back the inexorable movement forward that makes them wistful and emotional, and Firewatch is probably the MacDaddy of all of them. Walking simulators will break your heart. I want to go back and play it now, just writing about it.īut it’s not the only perfect game on the list, and loses out solely because there is one game that achieves much the same feat and, gosh darn it, I have to have a preference. It manages to fully capture the voice and thoughts of its central teen. It’s control over the narrative and what the game is eventually about is masterful. The puckish devs want you to believe that this is a setting for some jump scares and psychological horror, but the tale they tell is more essential than that. You find scattered notes and journals from your family, particularly your sister, Samantha, who is going through her formative teens. The floorboards creak, the lights flicker, and white noise plays through televisions. Gone Home brings you back to your family’s residence, but it’s empty. Props to the Fullbright Company who get two games on this list (Tacoma being their other joint). Taking of fantastic houses in gaming, we come to the Greenbriar house, sole location of Gone Home. It’s a fantastic piece of magic realism, and it’s one of the most memorable houses in gaming (ooh, another listicle topic!).įor some, the stories might be relentlessly downbeat or morbid, being entirely focused on death, but there’s positivity and light to be found.
#BEST SIMULATION GAMES XBOX SERIES X FULL#
And it’s the estate that is the focal character – a Frankenstein’s monster of architecture, full of pocket mausoleums all dedicated to fallen family members. It also scatters it’s narrative with more interactive ‘minigames’, for want of a better word.īut let’s not get nitpicky: What Remains of Edith Finch is rightly revered, casting you as the last remaining member of the Finch family, returning to the family estate to largely reminisce. There’s not actually that much walking, as the wonderful, chimeric house you are in is so dense that you’ll be tiptoeing through it at a snail’s pace. One of the first games to come to mind when people mention walking simulators, What Remains of Edith Finch is actually the one that comes closest to being ejected from the list for breaking its rules.