No More Fun And Games [Hypnospace Outlaw]
Hypnospace Outlaw is one of the funniest games of the generation — a loving parody of Web 1.0 and the creative, earnest spirit of the early 90s internet. If you’re a kid that grew up when the internet first became ubiquitous, there’s plenty of nostalgia to mine as you explore crude websites written by teenagers, music fans, and religious old ladies.
Things take a dark turn late in the game. In Hypnospace Outlaw, you play as a moderator of HypnospaceOS — an internet players connect to in their dreams. As you play, you discover a hack that causes many deaths, shutting down the services, and jumping players decades into the future where former HypnospaceOS users are compiling a WayBackMachine-like database. It’s somber and a little bit sad, and completely changes the mood as you reconnect with people that seemed like one-off jokes. We all had to grow up sometime.
Pick A Side [Fire Emblem: Three Houses]
Fire Emblem: Three Houses starts as a relatively light-hearted tactical RPG, where your team of nobles train for war — you’ll have to pick your house, but all three are allies in the same kingdom. You’ll work together, fight alongside one another, and form relationships.
Until the cruel twist in the second half. Edelgard, leader of one of the houses, has been working against the Church in secret. Those weird enemies you’ve been fighting? That was your ally all along, and you have to decide whether to work with her, or fight her. No matter what you choose, this plunges the three houses into a deadly civil war. Every mission, you’ll be forced to kill all your old friends — only a select few can be spared.
That twist turns one of the most light-hearted games in the series into one of the darkest. It doesn’t exactly fly off the rails, but it does throw us completely off the tracks we expected.
That’s our 10 picks for games that completely swerve us. What other games belong on this list? We’re always looking for the weirdest stuff in gaming.
