Around 10pm last night I got a text from my buddy, Collin. Like me, he’s an avid trophy hunter, except he’s simultaneously better and significantly worse at it than I am. That might sound confusing if you’re not super into games but let me break it down for you.
Collin has more trophies than me (he’s better at it than me).
Collin has more trophies in garbage games (he’s significantly worse at it than me).
He asks me to download a game to help him get the trophies in it and I am immediately skeptical. Dude is like me, he has a deep film background, so I know he has a high bar for gaming experiences. With that said, he has the platinums for My Name is Mayo and My Name is Mayo 2, games where you literally spend hours pressing a button to tap a jar of mayonnaise, so sometimes I’d like to beat him over the head with that high bar of his just to remind him it’s there.
However dumb you feel looking at this, I feel dumber for googling it.
The game he wants me to grab is $5, I don’t talk to the guy nearly as much as I’d like to, and the best part about the Celtics not playing on a Monday night means I’m not in a bad mad from watching the Celtics lose a lead in the fourth quarter on a Monday night.
I tell him yes, it’s downloading, and I’ll be ready to play soon. The game is We Were Here, and I’m so happy I listened to him. We Were Here is the best $5 I’ve spent all year, and I’ve had two (2) pastrami sandwiches from the Hannaford’s deli already.
We Were Here is a two player co-op only game, and it’s sort of like an escape room where one person has to give direction to the other. Doing so will unlock the next area for one player, who can then unlock the next area for the other. There’s no direction in the game whatsoever, it’s a game of evidence and assumptions where you never really know what you’re doing but you know when it feels right.
You have to find a walkie-talkie, that will allow you to voice chat with your partner. Once you’ve got it, you can pull a trigger to talk. You’re either the Librarian, stuck in a locked room with several doors, or the Explorer, someone out in the world coming across weird stuff.
Except the stuff isn’t that weird because it all corresponds to something back in the room the Librarian is in. The Explorer is beset by mystery and you’ll both have to do a series of puzzles and tasks that range from bizarre, to dangerous, to spooky. You’re either leading or being led, the walkie or the talkie.
Weird as this looks, it’s the tip of the iceberg.
It’s an hour long. It’s $5. It’s the best game I’ve played all year.
The gameplay is so… simple. You can interact with select objects, you can jump, and you can crouch but to be honest—the crouching and the jumping don’t seem to matter, so really all you can do is interact with select objects. The entire game is all about communicating with your partner. You’ve got to be curt and accurate because your partner will have to respond in real time or else in many situations it’s game over. You can’t really get lucky in this game. You can have instincts and they can be right, but you cannot play this game with someone who doesn’t listen or doesn’t tell you exactly what they’re seeing or what they need.
Even the act of pulling the trigger to bring up the walkie-talkie is a simple but powerful action because you can cut off your partner in the middle of them talking. Since you’re either stuck in a room or out in the wilderness, you’re powerless to the elements and the puzzles you haven’t solved yet. Your walkie-talkie is the only thing that proves you’re not alone in this weird-ass place. It’s the only part of the game that isn’t a puzzle, the only thing you don’t have to figure out (once you find it, that is). With that said, do you really want to piss off your partner by interrupting them? No, you don’t, because you’ll feel like an asshole (trust me). They made picking up a walkie-talkie have all the weight of pulling a gun’s trigger.
We Were Here started off as a project by students a few years ago and it’s finally coming to PlayStation, along with more games in the series that I now can’t wait to grab. I don’t normally play games like this, where the game revolves around something besides jumping, kill streaks, or combos. Instead I had to think about what I was saying because the lack of clarity would result in a game-over screen, yes, but mostly because I didn’t want to sound dumb to my friend. I want more games like this in my life, where the object is to explore and understand the world instead of save it. I want more games where I have to be a smart person, not a lucky one.
We Were Here was $5. It was an hour. It was weird. It was wonderful. The best gaming experience I’ve had all year took less time to get through than TLC’s FanMail, and it cost less money than lunch.
Good thing I listened to my friend, but I’m still judging him for My Name is Mayo though.