Reddit reviews Well Played 1.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning

If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading Well Played 1.0, or the youtube series "Great Levels in Gaming."
Well Played 1.0 is a collection of essays by 22 different people discussing videogames and how the medium allows different stories to be told or experienced.
Great Levels in Gaming is much the same kinds of discussions, but video based rather than book words. The linked video is discussing how the interactivity can be used to make you feel amazing, and how it can be used to make you feel like a piece of shit.


I'm running from memory and I'll apologise now for any mix-ups I make.
There's essays/discussions about how Portal is essentially tutorial for 90% of the game, and how the design is geared towards slowly introducing new tools and techniques towards the player.

In Shadow of the Colossus, how a specific early Colossus is placed atop a giant platform that you can survive the fall from. How players early on see the black tendrils as a negative thing to try to escape from, but always fail to escape. Because the Colossus is high above a survivable fall you're able to escape for a longer amount of time but it's still inevitable, reinforcing that the slow descent into darkness is something you can't escape from forever.

Kane and Lynch is a enforced co-op game (similar to Army of Two) and has an interesting moment during the bank robbery mission. In one section the character Kane separates and searches for more money, while the character Lynch is made the guard hostages. At one point Lynch goes to another room, has one of his characters mental/psychotic breakdowns, returns to the hostages and finds they've all been rescued by the police. Once Lynch starts shooting at the police Kane returns to find.......Lynch murdered all the hostages during his psychotic break. If you're playing with a friend, the person playing as Lynch will have seen police while the person playing as Kane will have seen hostages and a fucked up friend.
Kane and Lynch also has a gamemode that is essentially game theory. You work with your partner to rob a bank (or get money somehow) and can escape without issue, but you are well within the game to kill your partner and steal their share of the loot. Killing your partner doesn't decrease the amount of enemies or the difficulty of the mission, but if you do it earlier rather than later you're more likely to get yours and their set of the loot.


Lastly I want to mention Splinter Cell Convictions co-op story. Throughout the entire game you play as two Splinter Cells working together, then you get to end of the story. In the final level just before the game ends an objective will show up on your screen saying "Kill your partner." This will happen to both you and your partner, and turns the what has been a co-operative experience into a deathmatch. If you're playing with a friend for the first time through you might lie or actively try your best to kill them, reflecting the thoughts that the characters are going through where you're turning on someone you've worked with for so long.