The Games of my Life

If you know this game - really *know* it (and the asterisks are a reference to it :)) - it’s one you’re sure never to forget. Like many of the best games, this one doesn’t have many fans, but the ones it has consider it one of the best games of all time - if not the best. To me, it’s certainly the best of its kind. Ladies and gentlemen… Planescape: Torment.

Torment is a computer role playing game (CRPG), and possibly the one which most deserves the “R”. The story is mature (and I’m not talking about sex or violence, although it has those, too - but described, not shown), thought-provoking, and deals with concepts never seen or even mentioned in a computer game. You play an amnesiac immortal who wakes up in a slab, inside a mortuary, with no memory of how he got there. His first companion is a wisecracking floating skull. He is in Sigil, the City of Doors, a city with portals to every plane of existence in the multi-verse, a place where belief shapes reality.

Many things make this game unique. For instance (some possible spoilers):

• since you’re an immortal who has lived for eons, as you become more powerful, you aren’t really learning new skills, but remembering them. In other words, instead of gaining experience and skills by fighting monsters, like in most CRPGs, you learn by doing actions - or hearing things - that jog your memory.
• just because you don’t remember your past, it doesn’t mean that your past doesn’t remember you. You have affected many people in your past “lives”… and you weren’t exactly a nice guy.
• this time, however, you can choose what you will be like. And you don’t select your alignment at the start of the game, like in other games - instead, it’s affected by your actions. Lie and become chaotic, help others and become good… and so on.
• your companions have personalities and stories like you’ve never seen in any other game. Baldur’s Gate 2 or KOTOR are nothing compared to this one in this respect.
• at a point in the game, you find out that you, in the past, left something for your present self - hidden among your intestines!
• in this world, belief has power. For instance, if you lie to several people that you are someone else (whom you’ve just made up), that made-up person later actually shows up…
• have you ever heard of a chaste succubus? A pregnant street? Improving your powers using tattoos? A “Brothel of Intellectual Lusts”? A museum of memories?

The game also features some well-known voice actors, including Sheena Easton (yes, the singer, and she speaks with an awesome accent), Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson!) and John de Lancie (Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation). The graphics are amazing and varied, even at 640×480.

Really, if you like brililant, intriguing stories, or if you need convincing that “games aren’t just for kids”, you must play this game. It’s probably ridiculously cheap, too.

Links: Mirror of the original official site (which no longer exists)