Thanks to video games possessing the ability to transcend what we can perceive around us in the day to day, and because they absolutely love to dip into the fantastical, it’s very common to find moments that are completely at odds with normality.
Hell, even so-called straight-faced and straight-laced titles carry with them what can only be described as “video game logic”, after all, who would actually throw away a near full clip in the middle of a firefight? Ridiculous right?
Well, some games love to use this escapism platform to reach through the screen and massage our frontal lobes in ways that are both stimulating and sometimes absolutely haunting, grabbing our brain and slapping it inside a blender before hitting “frape” with gusto.
These are such titles, that while only being recently released are absolutely dominating the public consciousness as they seek to utterly mess with, and probably then dominate our tiny monkey minds.
When it comes to games that mess with your mind, I would be remiss not to speak about a title that posits you in charge of an already broken one.
Disco Elysium is basically like playing through a mental breakdown in slow motion, showcasing detective Harry Dubois as he tries to solve a murder but finding that everyone and everything, including his own mind, is completely against him.
In a rather unique fashion, Disco Elysium has different parts of your brain feed you responses, information, and stimuli in order to help or hinder your responses, and while listening to your gut instinct might help occasionally, other times it will completely ruin relationships.
It’s a game about trying to balance a chaotic mind, and as a result, will often see you make mistakes, trip over your words or even make things worse by trying to do the right thing.
It’s a game that teaches you everyone makes mistakes, and that’s completely ok, something which other video games effectively try to stamp out, and as such, it’s a title that will take up residence in your brain for a long time to come.
