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Curated playlist

Coming-of-age fiction

  • The Last of Us (video game)The Last of Us, a 2013 action-adventure game from Naughty Dog, ends with a man swearing to a girl that his story is true. It is not. Joel gives the oath because Ellie insists on it. Everything before that moment is a long walk toward it.…
  • God of War (2018 video game)God of War, the 2018 PlayStation 4 game from Santa Monica Studio, was formally announced at the 2016 Electronic Entertainment Expo with a short gameplay demo. In it, a fully bearded Kratos taught his young son how to hunt. Soon afterward…
  • Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles MoralesMarvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a 2020 superhero game set in a Manhattan buried under Christmas snow. Its hero is a young Spider-Man who still doubts that he can wear the mask as well as the man who trained him. Around him, his new…
  • Life Is Strange (video game)Life Is Strange opens in October 2013, as an 18-year-old photography student named Max Caulfield returns to Arcadia Bay, Oregon, to attend Blackwell Academy. During class she has a vivid vision of a tornado destroying a lighthouse and…
  • Persona 3Persona 3 asks its player to press a gun-shaped device against their own head and fire. The device is called an Evoker, and the shot summons a Persona, a physical form of the shooter's psyche. Atlus developed this role-playing game, which…
  • Kamala KhanKamala Khan first appeared in print as a face in the background of Captain Marvel #14, published in August 2013. Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick placed her there on purpose. In that scene, Kamala watches Carol Danvers protect civilians from an…
  • Beyond: Two SoulsBeyond: Two Souls, a 2013 video game from the studio Quantic Dream, was built on a script of around 2,000 pages. A typical screenplay runs between 95 and 125 pages, with each page worth roughly a minute of screen time. Elliot Page, who…
  • EarthBoundEarthBound is a 1994 role-playing game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and its American advertising declared, 'This game stinks.' Nintendo meant it as a joke. In Japan the game was called Mother 2, and it was led by Shigesato…
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of TimeThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time holds an average score of 99/100 on Metacritic, the highest of any game on that review aggregator. Nintendo developed and published it for the Nintendo 64, and it was the first Zelda game built in three…
  • Persona 5Persona 5 opens in an interrogation room in Tokyo, and it keeps pulling the player back there. The 2016 role-playing game, built by the Atlus development studio P-Studio, is the sixth installment in the Persona series, which grew out of…
  • Hades (video game)Hades is a 2020 action game from Supergiant Games in which the hero dies again and again, and that failure is the point. Its hero, Zagreus, is the son of the ruler of the Underworld, and he badly wants to leave home. Every attempt turns…
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind WakerThe Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker sold 4.6 million copies on the GameCube. That sounds like a triumph until it is set beside the 7.6 million copies that Ocarina of Time had sold. Nintendo released this 2002 adventure to enormous critical…
  • Persona 4Persona 4 is a 2008 role-playing game from the Japanese developer Atlus, and it opens on a puzzle that sounds like a ghost story. In a small rural town, bodies are found dangling from television antennas, and no one can say what killed…

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