Continuing the write-ups on my top 10 favorite video games of all time.
Other entries in this series:
10. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
8. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
7. Chop Suey
6. Knights and Bikes
5. Super Metroid
4. Gone Home
3. Butterfly Soup
2. The Last of Us Part I
1. The Last of Us Part II
9. PERFECT TIDES
This one's actually from 2022. My favorite new game this year so far is Perfect Tides, and since you've never heard of it, let me just introduce you by saying that it's easily one of the best point-and-click games I've ever played before. I've got a number of reasons for feeling this way:
1) This is a game about life. And that's it. More specifically, it's about the life of a particular teenage girl named Mara Whitefish lived out over the course of the year 2000. And that's more than enough. Seriously, I actually think games recourse to supernatural or sci-fi plot devices far too often, or else are just straightforward simulation games that may be mechanically sound and entertaining to a point, but, for lack of a better way of putting it, lack the feels. Perfect Tides is among only the tiniest handful of games I've ever played that have been something else, and I wish there were more like it.
2) The relationship between the player and Mara is perfect. There are many dialogue choices in this game and they make a difference, but while many games with substantial choose-your-own-adventure elements wind up reducing their protagonist to simply a shell -- but a stand-in for the player's own personality, often complete with a title instead of a name -- Mara remains very much her own person throughout, and this fact kept me emotionally attached to her. Like for example, the Mara who writes an intimate, yearning letter to internet friend-turned-love-interest Staggle is the same person as the Mara who writes that friend a friendly-but-guarded letter instead, but once the letter is sent, Mara’s response to Staggle’s reply letter is her response, not the player’s. You have control over her movements and over many of her narrative choices, but not just all of them, and this balance makes the difference in terms of rendering both Mara herself and her journey through love and friendship and school, work, home life, scorn and conflict, something truly involving and special. The relationship between the player and the game's narrator is also one I find interesting in its nuances.
3) The story this game tells. If you want a remarkably accurate snapshot of what American culture was like back at the turn of century, you will find it here, carefully preserved in loving detail. But more than nostalgia for this infrequently-revisited point in time, the setting also stands out. Perfect Tides is the name of the island that Mara lives on; a place that's known first and foremost as a vacation spot, but one that maintains a small year-round community, each of whom handles their relative isolation in different ways. The island is in the process of being gentrified in a fact that Mara develops wildly different feelings about as she herself develops. You'll play through a few key, formative days of each season of the year on the island, and the set pieces for each are ambient and inspired. Although not intended primarily as a social commentary, the game's themes feels especially pertinent this year, especially in as far as Mara happens to loosely qualify as what we today might term a kind of proto-femcel. (2022 having been dubbed "the year of the femcel" by some in the press, owing to an exponential surge in usage of the hashtag on various social medias like TikTok and the recent revival of Tumblr.) The dialogue, what's more, is witty, honest, and immersive to a degree that's almost unique in this medium. Seriously, I cannot do justice in words here to how well this game is written! Mara's struggles for attention, trust, friendship, love, meaning, self-improvement, peace within her family, and peace within herself are not only memorable, but something special in their specificity, complexity, and accuracy. Her chats on the online fan-fiction community she logs onto via AOL dial-up (you get the full experience, complete with the scrambled dial tone, word that the song you found finished downloading overnight, etc. 
) feel very much like the real deal and effectively convey how moving and important one's online life could be even in those early days of popular internet and rank among the game's many highlights for me, along with its distinctive art style that strikes a wonderfully delicate balance between true-to-life, nostalgic, and endearingly cartoony.
4) This game about a the coming of age of a teenage was actually directed by a woman (Meredith Gran). I really, really feel like that's a huge factor in why Mara's personality and decisions come across as this exceptionally believable, frankly. I seriously can't help wondering how much of the game might even autobiographical; it's that raw and real! Unlike so many other "multi-dimensional" game characters, Mara is not simply two-dimensional. She's instead an extremely complicated mess: depressed, sweet, dramatic, flawed, witty, fun, and more, not just reduced to a couple defining characteristics. It's so thematically appropriate that the whole experience is so unfocused, lacking clear guidance or objectives...much like Mara! Most likely not a coincidental design choice.
5) Okay, this one's just a special bonus with meaning to me, but...toward the end, Perfect Tides also includes what sure the hell to me looks like an extended, loving homage to the oft-forgotten 1995 point-and-click adventure Chop Suey that always makes my all-time top 10 list every year and it's the most joyous thing I've ever experienced in a video game before, period! Nobody remembers Chop Suey. Or so I thought! I couldn't believe it. I couldn't..fucking..believe it! Knowing that the creators of this game were influenced by Chop Suey specifically was the proverbial icing on the cake for me. Just made me feel seen, and loved.
Perfect Tides certainly won't win any Game of the Year awards (it's much too obscure; in fact, it's probably like the most obscure game that I own, save only Chop Suey), but it greatly deserves to be seen, and played, and I want to help make it just that much more visible here.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 14 January 2023
