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Yesterday you submitted to a marathon of Stranger Things, breaking occasionally for food and trips to the toilet, in order to cushion the blow of seeing one of the many spoilers already flooding your feeds. You feel happy for watching eight episodes of quality television, but also knackered. Allow me to suggest that you reinvigorate yourself with an immediate course of video games. As ever, the show, subsisting on a diet of not-so-freshly popped culture, offers up a deluge of movie and TV references. (I’ll not soon forget the sight of Will Byers, in season 1, cocooned in a thick crust of dried slime, in similar fashion to those sorry souls in Aliens.) but if you want to hit on the essential zest of the new season without reheating old Hollywood, then there are a few games that might do the trick even better.
***Some mild spoilers for Stranger Things season 3 ahead, so if you get back to binging if you haven’t finished it yet!***
Oxenfree
Oxenfree is about a gaggle of gormless adolescents who embark on an adventure. While on their trip to a nearby island, they tune in to some eerie radio frequencies. Their friendships are tested in a high-stress, medium-spooky environment, which makes it sound as if they’ve ventured into a haunted oven. To their horror, they find that somewhere on the island, at some indeterminate point, they have ‘come of age.’ Quite what that age is I’ve never been sure; I’d hazard a guess at about 16. Their clothes and quips loft them above the nerdy banter of the gang in Stranger Things, but everything else is pretty similar. There’s even an alternate dimension that drapes everything in murk. Given that Oxenfree came out in January, 2016, and Stranger things arrived in July, I think Oxenfree could seek litigation – mind you, Spielberg could take them both to the cleaners.
Destroy All Humans
Destroy All Humans is all about aliens invading our world in 1959. They telepathically control us, explode animals for their brainstems, and they satirically skew the apple pie Americana of the time. The twist, hinting at subtly by the title, is that you play as the alien – whose name is Cryptosporidium-136. Half the game is about revelling in the period: that of drive-in movie theatres, beehive hair, cheeseburgers, and the constant threat of communism. Play this if you want to revel in a slightly earlier time than Stranger Things – no less queasy-kitsch, mind – and perhaps if you wish to empathise with the things that dwell in the upside down. (The game also allows you to levitate cows and blow them up, therefore catering to some dark impulses you may or may not have, that don’t have anything to do with the show or the game.)
Firewatch
The schlubby gait, the thickening waist, and the wooden cabin, shaded from the rest of civilisation by dense woods. Police Chief Jim Hopper, of Stranger things, could step out of Hawkins, Indiana and head straight from the Wyoming wilderness. If you’ve a yearning for a time when walkie-talkies were at the sharper edge of technology, and you wish to imagine what Hopper might get up to, were he to take a leisurely summer vacation, then Firewatch is for you. Henry, the hero of Firewatch, is less surly but just as stricken with grief – a doomy family history has sent him out into isolation, and there are times, playing Firewatch, when you can feel the undergirding of grief in his voice. Besides, his cross-frequency flirting with fellow fire lookout Delilah is very similar to Dustin’s, in Stranger Things, with the mythical Suzie from summer camp.
Hotline Miami
The adventures of a hammer-swinging psycho, who merrily stalks from place to place brutalising the atmosphere, may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Stranger Things. (That sort of thing is best left to Bob the Builder.) But Hotline Miami is tuned to some of the same frequencies as the new season of Stranger Things. Firstly, the crayola colour palette of the ‘80s washes over the show and the game, splattered with blood in both. Second, the notion of jumpsuited spies in overalls, masquerading as delivery men, sending coded messages is reminiscent of Hotline Miami’s Janitors. And third, the ominous presence of Russia, brooding over the American way of life. You could play Hotline Miami and pretend that some of your victims have succumbed to the Mindflayer!
Gone Home
Gone Home is set in the soft gloom of a big house in the woods, in Oregon. It’s also set in the soft gloom of ‘90s – that grungy comedown of a time after the sugar rush of the decade before. You play as Katie Greenbriar, a 21-year old girl (whether or not she has ‘come of age’ remains unconfirmed), who returns home from a trip to Europe. The house is empty of humans but crammed with the jumble of their lives – the cassette tapes(!), the diaries, the typewriters(!). Thus it offers the soft fuzz of nostalgia. The entire thing, which only lasts around two hours, is tuned to the subtlest suggestion of the ghostly, without ever showing its hand. If you’re feeling glum after the credits roll on Stranger Things, then playing Gone Home might be like playing Coldplay after a break up. Only, Gone Home is better than Coldplay.
Night in the Woods
The hair, the high-waisted shorts, and the shirts that induce tinnitus. What better way to dress up the inherent pain of growing up than by glossing your characters in the glamour of the ‘80s? Well, how about by making your characters animals? Night in the Woods, tells the story of Mae, a cat, who lands back home, after dropping out of college, and struggles to come to terms with life – and its habit of spluttering and slipping short of expectations. The animals of Mae’s town have the warm look of anthropomorphic felt, but they are stitched with sadness. In similar fashion to the way that this third season of Stranger Things has dealt with some of the more somber aspects to growing up, Night in the Woods takes those themes and runs with them, glazing them over in the copper colours of autumn. Have fun, feel nostalgic, keep the tissues close.
Stranger Things 3: The Game
You kill adult men with a baseball bat in this one.
