I haven’t managed to play as many games as I’d like this month because I’ve been finishing up Freeplay and setting up a really exciting exhibition project down here at the National Gallery of Victoria called Game/Play. If you find yourself down in Melbourne between now and November 5th, come along and check it out.

What I have managed to play has been a strange wander down memory lane for me.

Earlier in the month I played the new Deus Ex: Human Revolution game. The original game – which is now 11 years old – is my favourite PC game of all time (we’ll get to console in a minute) so I was cautious about how they might update the game for modern audiences and consoles. 2000 was still dominated by the PlayStation 1, although the PlayStation 2 did come out that year. It was a few years before I got a hold of one though.

There are a lot of little moments in the new Deus Ex that remind me of the original, but for some reason, it lacks the same spark. That might be because it’s been over a decade since I played it, or it might be that I’ve grown up, or that the requirements of a game of that scale mean certain rough edges needed to be softened or removed entirely, but I found myself disappointed with it in the end. Lots of other people seem to like it though, so it’s very likely just me 

Going back even further, I’ve been playing the remake of Another World on my iPad. The original was released on 1991 – 20 years ago – on the Amiga, which is where I played it originally. It was the first game I’d ever seen that felt cinematic. The opening sequence – which is completely silent – blew me away at the time, and I still got goosebumps watching it again sitting on my couch.

Other than making the controls work on iPad / iPhone and polishing up the graphics (while still keeping the originals as options), they don’t seem to have changed very much at all, which means that it’s a fascinating time capsule of how games were a few decades ago. Another World is unforgiving. You will die. A lot. Before you figure out exactly what to do. You have unlimited lives though – something that contemporary games appear to have adopted wholesale – and you just need to learn the right way through the game’s puzzles.

That harshness fits with the game’s ambience though. It is a difficult and strange world you find yourself in, without necessarily knowing why or how you ended up there.

And from a writers’ perspective it succeeds where so many games fail because it tells almost its entire story without words. You explore and interact and struggle and silently learn what’s going on. It’s an amazing mix of mechanics and environment and story that a lot of contemporary games could learn from.

A little closer to now, later this week my favourite game of all time – Shadow of the Colossus – is being rereleased on PlayStation 3. The original came out on PlayStation 2 in 2004 so it’s a little younger than the other games here, but I’m no less excited about it.

Like Another World, it’s a frequently silent game that creates its experience through the player’s movement through the environment and interaction with the 16 colossi who they have to kill.

It’s an incredibly complex game that begins as so many games do with an epic quest that quickly descends into melancholy and ends on a strange note of not-quite-hope. I’m really looking forward to playing through it again and seeing if my memories of it hold up, and reflecting on how things have changed – for games and for me – since I played it for the first time.

What have you been playing in September? Do you think you’ll play them again in a year? 5 Years? 10 Years? 20 Years? How much will things have changed then?