The Games That Define Summer July 25, 2012

As a kid I lived for my summers. During summer, since I wouldn’t have to get up at insanely early hours to go to school every summer I would stay up late, eventually becoming practically nocturnal. Without school I could enjoy my time and not worry about things like homework or projects being due, giving me three months of a stress free environment.

However, the downside of being up late hours and being asleep during daylight is that there’s really not much you can do during that time. If you don’t live in a big city most venues, except for maybe fast food restaurants or diners, will be closed. So, you have to find alternate ways to spend your time, and I would spend it playing video games.

During each summer, I would always find myself going back and replaying the same games that would reflect my own nocturnal lifestyle. The late hours were some of my favorite times in my life.

Since we’re right in the middle of the summer once again I thought I would share with you all some the games that I would find myself playing each summer. Regardless of when they were released they all have a special place in my memories.

The original Max Payne came out in summer 2001 for the PC and immediately I was drawn to playing it. It cost me a day’s pay from my summer job to buy it (and three more days to afford a decent graphics card to play it with) but it was worth every penny. While the game took place in the winter, the game embodied what I was doing that summer. With the exception of the prologue, all of the levels in Max Payne took place late at night in the city that never sleeps. What better way to spend my time then, as the game developers put it, continuing Max’s journey through the night? The game was groundbreaking in so many levels. Sure, the graphics were a huge leap over the games that had come before it, but it was the story that had me up all those late hours. It didn’t matter how hard that last level was, or how long it was going to take me to finish it, I just had to see how it ended. I owe the game a lot, I got my early start writing for a site dedicated to that game back in 2003.

Before I talk about this next game I’m going to give a quick bit of backstory about me. I spent a year living in Southern California. During that year I spent time at all the popular places you’d imagine, Hollywood, Santa Monica Beach, and Downtown Los Angeles. After the year ended and I returned home I was quite happy with the time I spent out there and ended up writing a play.

When Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines released a year later for the PC it felt like a homecoming to a place I had been very familiar with. Yes, I know the game came out in Winter 2004, but I don’t think I ended up playing it until at least Summer 2005. And furthermore, compared to where I’m from, pretty much every time of the year is Summer in Southern California. Since I could make my own schedule that year, I had spent the year sleeping late hours, being up when the sun had long set and doing things late at night. A year later here I was playing a video game where I was practically reliving that year…only now I was an actual vampire. I wasn’t much of an action/rpg player at that time, but for that game I made an exception. The game’s atmosphere of night, mixing the real locations with the supernatural themes perfectly is what kept me playing it each and every summer.

I think Psychonauts also deserves a special mention as well. Taking place at the Whispering Rock Summer Camp, the game practically defined a summer experience. While it starts off bright and cheerful I can’t imagine a game that drew me in and kept me playing until the sun came up better. The second half of the game takes place late at night in the camp, when all the other campers have gone to sleep, so when you are backtracking through all the spooky wilderness as your own clock says 3AM I could really relate to the character. With all of the game’s different secret hidden item types, you can imagine how many late hours I would spend going from mind to mind in the collective unconscious making sure that I found EVERY single figment, brain vault and mental cobweb, all so I could finish the game at Rank 100 and get the secret cinematic.

Alan Wake is one of those games that perfectly fit the summer game mold for me. I had been anticipating it ever since Remedy announced it in 2005, it released in summer 2010. While the game didn’t take place during the summer (the game establishes that it takes place in the days leading up to Deerfest and that Deerfest started September 15th), the theme of a vacation was prevalent throughout. The main character came to Bright Falls in order to go on vacation with his wife just as the town is hosting their huge yearly celebration.

But then of course there is the most obvious parallel, and that is that Alan Wake would fight his battles at night. The Dark Presence could not function in light, and anyone it controlled could be protected by darkness against any damage, but only as long as anyone it controlled was not exposed to light. The game’s atmosphere alone drew me in as we were exposed to a whole town, which seemed so normal on the surface during the daytime, but at night our whole perspective was shifted from a small town square to a dark forbidding, untamed environment, where light is our only ally. Only when the sun came back up were we safe. In fact, when Remedy made the next game in the series, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, they made the sunrise a major component of the game’s arcade levels.

Catherine was a game I first became familiar with at E3 2011, the first E3 I had attended in many years. It released in Summer 2011 and got a lot of exposure by the gaming press across the board. What really got my attention was its demo, which released on both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The game was unlike anything I had seen before, detailing the story of an everyman who was trying to find his place in the world, while his long-term girlfriend tried to get him to settle down. He would spend his late nights hard-drinking with his friends in a really cool bar, talking about their lives and trying to see who could get the highest score in the bar’s arcade game, Rapunzel.

Oh and, did I tell you that he was having nightmares where he was being chased by all of his fears while climbing up high towers into the sky and if he died in them he would die in real life? Yeah, kind of missed that part. This summer, I’ve been spending some of my nights up late trying to beat all 128 (yes, 128) levels of the bar’s Rapunzel arcade game.

So those are the games that defined my summers. I can’t tell you how great its been writing about all the good memories I’ve had while playing them. I will usually find myself playing or replaying one or more of these games, because to me replaying a game is more than just reliving the experiences I had playing the game itself, it also reminded me of all the good times I had in my summers as I was playing these games.

Hope you’re enjoying your Summer too!