5/5 ★ – kinchia's review of Celeste.

Goddamn I can’t even play platformers anymore without going “this is good but Celeste is better.” Scratch that, I can’t play GAMES anymore without comparing them to this thing. Before getting into the story, I think it’s appropriate to say that this probably has the best gameplay of any game I’ve ever played. One of my personal pet peeves in video games is the idea of losing progress. I can’t stand it. I’m trying to get better, but as it stands I just can’t deal with having “wasted” a bunch of time for no purpose in such a busy and fast-paced anxiety-ridden world. Celeste looks the player straight in the eyes and says “I understand.” It says it in the gameplay as well as in the story. Other games try and punish you or play with you - Celeste wants you to succeed. It wants you to feel powerful and happy and proud. Look, the actual story-via-dialogue of this game is really nothing special. It’s well-written casual dialogue about depression and I guess being trans kinda. But that’s not where the game shines - where it shines is the meeting point between the gameplay and the messaging. It shines when, after trying again and again and again on a seemingly impossible task, something finally clicks, you hit all the right buttons in the exact right sequence at the exact right times, and - voila - you did it. That’s something that no other story told in any other medium could possibly do, and it’s what makes this game truly special. Telling a story about a character is easy. Telling a story about YOU… now that’s something special.