Game #1289: Unpacking

 There's a lot to unpack here.

 I've actually owned this game for a while now, but I purchased it for my girlfriend and watched her play it. But, since I didn't want to end the year on such a sour note as Johnny Bazookatone was, and since Unpacking finally got a physical release this year, I finally played it for myself. 

 For starters, this game is quite clearly not the kind of game I enjoy. It's a sort of pseudo-puzzle game, in which you slowly unpack objects from boxes and place it inside various different rooms of various different houses. It's a puzzle because some objects have right and wrong places, although you can always turn off this mechanic in the Accessibility Menu in case you simply want to have fun placing everything and anything wherever you think fits best. But you shouldn't, at least on your first playthrough...

 ...because the best thing about this game is how it tells its story. Each chapter or house represents a different year of our mysterious protagonist's life. There's not dialogue and no cutscenes, besides a little flavor text after you finish a stage. And despite this, by what items the main character has on each year, they manage to tell a story. There are houses in which you've got little room for your stuff, be it a roommate or a lover, and this too is to tell its story. It's hard to talk about it without giving too much away, because slowly piecing everything together by yourself, or reading some hypothesis afterwards online, is part of the game's charm.

 Despite some objects having 'right' places, there's a lot of freedom in how you display and organize everything, which is pretty neat. Most items can be rotated too. The game is made entirely in 2-D, and there's some gorgeous sprite art at play here. Still, one of the best things about the game... is that it allows for touch controls! The game is a couple of hours long, but I'd say it's just the right length for the kind of game that it is. The only complaint I have is that the game only tells you when something is not in the right place AFTER you've put every item outside the boxes, but it's more of a nitpick than anything else.

 Something that would've been super welcome would've been some sort of in-game glossary of items. While most of them are pretty accurate representations of what they are, a few, particularly if you've never seen them in real life, like the Panini maker, are impossible to know what they are. No wonder the subreddit has a ton of people asking what some things are, I've even seen people asking about the Gamecube!

 Unpacking is a brilliant game, and I don't think any other form of media has told its story in quite the same way as this one. That alone is reason enough as to why this game is worth a look, and this is coming from someone that likes his games fast and explosive. Oh, and by the by, it ends on a super cheesy song. I love it.

 8.0