So, Sims 4, am I right?

Right so I'm the type of Sims player where my guys are a high-end fish tank. I dress them up pretty, give them a home, pat them on the butt and send them on their way. I'll occasionally dip in and see what the haps are but for the most part it's just really making sure there aren't any inadvertent fires and that nobody is a vampire.

With that in mind, I'm still holding my breath with this new Sims 4 business. Death of the body mod sliders is cause for massive celebration, and the idea of favourites and preferences actually having any relevance is crazy ace, but I swear to goodness, EA, you touch my Create a Style and I will cut you up. You put that CAS back in there if you have to jam it in and ducktape it with code so sloppy even I can understand it's poor construction.

I'm psyched for the up-coming year, really, like I am everytime a new Sims pops out the oven. A year's a suitably long enough time for us to all get computers that can actually run the game, and hopefully in a couple of months we'll start seeing our first pudding-face simbabies.

I review Dragon Age: Origins and battle my on-going games related trust issues

Now let's talk about promises, Bioware.

I don't know if this was written first and then the game happened
or if they wrote the game then went
'oh, shit'

I don't really know what to say. I should've expected it, because nobody explicitly goes out of their way to deny anything unless there's a real good reason why people would think something. 

Sten and me are still pals though because he
actually is questioning his understanding of gender roles

What's frustrating is that in playing a game set in Medieval-esque times, I don't expect equality, really. Yes, I would like it, very, very much, especially when it's an Elves-and-Dwarves Magicathon. I'm even excited when games like the Elder Scrolls don't go out of their way to make me feel like I have defend my decision to have my ugly little sasquash dwarf throw her cheap ass sword around. In a world where physical strength can come from magic as well as muscle I don't really get the big deal of just letting me have my escapism, but whatever. Apparently that is a thing people like, having sexism in a game, so I'll just leave it alone when nobody pretends it isn't there.

would you like a story, Warden
would you like it to be about how 50% of the population suck

Don't get my hopes up. That's what makes me mad. That's what makes me hate your game where I'd have probably liked it in the way you do when you've played something for 10 hours and can't really not complete it anymore. I would have pretty happily chuntered along hearing about how I shouldn't have been forcibly recruited into this stupid blood death cult by a dude who tricked me when I was at my lowest by being nice to me in a world otherwise filled with suffering. I'll just hand in my sword, then. Oh wait, I can't. The game doesn't let me do that either.

there was no response option for 'THIS WASN'T WHAT THE CHARACTER 

CREATOR PROMISED ME'

Where was I?

you are right they technically didn't make me, they cultivated a bond of trust

that persuaded me to volunteer that they then shattered via death poison I was forced to drink

Right, right, betrayal. I guess I just don't really see what you thought you were doing when you lied to me like that, since in other games where there's covert sexism, like in the gender ratio that you don't really notice unless you're used to dissecting media, could probably get away with it, your game is so raging with it. 

where did that kid hear this from that he then repeated later
i am going to punch your fictional non existent NPC parents so hard kid

so hard

From every corner, and every race. Every dude comments on my characters beauty and near everyone has a sass to make about my having both tits and a greatsword. This isn't little bits here and there that come from someone at the fringes of society. This is a deeply imbued sexism that reflects our society. 

this was my first taste of Bioware equality

I CAN EVEN CHOOSE MY CHARACTER TO PROPAGATE IT. Which just makes me sad, you know? And I don't know if I should be even sadder, because this is what you think an equal society looks like. That even when men and women are considered equal, it's still just a 'fact' that women are weaker, more cowardly then men? 

Morrigan Explains It All

Whatever. I'm hooked, and I'm still playing Dragon Age: Origins. Your game, like Duncan, has given me minor Stockholm syndrome. 20 hours in and I will probably finish this game, eventually, if just for my dumb stupid brilliant wardog Beans and our shared character histories. 

Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a treasure, do you hear me. Fuck impartiality in games reviews. Papers, Please is a treasure and you should go and play it. I mean, all right, things went a little bit tits up and I may have ended up getting me killed and my family killed and the country going to shit but honestly when you give a humble boarder crossing guard that kind of responsibility you have to expect a little bit of rough sailing before the smooth, gentle seas of submitting yourself to totalitarian repression.

I'm probably moving too fast here for the guys not in the loop in regards to the latest indie simulator hit. Papers, Please, is a game by Luca Pope, also creator of 6 Degrees of Sabotage and the Republica Times. You play as a boarder inspector for the newly reopened Arstotzka Grenin gates and do keep up, because you are quickly going to have to learn on the fly, checking documentations and passports and being absolutely, concrete sure you're letting the right guys in lest you and your family pay the price.

As with all of Pope's games you play a fairly unimportant little man in a very important position. You have a lot of power, tenuoisly, and will inevitably turn somewhat into a monster as your family start to starve because you tried to do a one fingered salute to the system. There's big plot, and there's little plot. You have a lot of agency to play how you want providing you're prepared to deal with the consequences; sure, play the countries hero. Or you could actually make sure your son doesn't starve to death by earning the daily bread.

Right, facts. Lucas Pope does everything, and he should be applauded because this game is beautiful. There's been somewhat of a spate of games that are too dreary for my tastes, but Pope has a hard enough grasp of colour that while soviet greens, greys and sludges are the ruling class it serves to make the few splashes of vibrancy pop.

Papers, Please, £6.99 available on steam, GOG.com and Lucas Pope's personal website where also a class act demo can be found for the people that'll want to give it a bash before they commit.