In The Loop
I don't necessarily have a favorite genre of videogame. Like all forms of quantification, I have a difficult time picking a ranking order for things I enjoy, so if asked for a favorite, I'll usually reply with one of two or three titles that I've had some time to reflect on, to determine if something truly bears the mark of exceptional quality, or just has a really satisfying gameplay loop.
If you're unfamiliar with the idea of a gameplay loop, it's essentially a set of actions within a given game that are repeated over the course of the game. This differs slightly from game genres, which can be much broader and less descriptive, and a game mechanic, which is more granular but less useful in explaining what might be appealing to someone you're trying to describe a game to. All of the Animal Crossing games are classified as Sim or Simulation games, contain a whole bunch of different mechanics (dialogue with NPCs, design, collection, etc.), and have a bunch of gameplay loops of varying complexity and length (e.g. buying, checking prices, then selling turnips; or catching, donating, and displaying bugs or fish).
Over the weekend I got absolutely bodied by a game that came out earlier this year and I'd forgotten about until someone mentioned it on a podcast earlier this week. The game is Promise Mascot Agency, which is essentially a Sim game in which you play a disgraced Yakuza hiding out in a cursed town forced to rekindle and manage a defunct mascot concern. You recruit, negotiate with, and send these mascots on timed appearances in which you have to balance their skills and type with what the client wants. That's the primary loop that everything else is built around, and it's fine. Cute, quirky, a little challenging, but nothing much to write home about.
However, in the process of rebuilding the agency you are also trying to revitalize the town, run off the corrupt mayor, restore closed sites to bring back tourism, use your mascot earnings to save your Yakuza boss from encroaching danger, and a whole lot of other stuff that really only makes sense once you're hands-on with the game. You do this mainly by driving around the large world map in a kei truck with your mascot assistant Pinky, a severed pinky finger, bouncing around in back.
You probably know by now whether or not this is something you'd enjoy, but I was struck by the fact that I hadn't picked up this game earlier in part because I forgot about it, but also because it's made by a developer whose previous game, Paradise Killer, also sounded completely up my alley but I could never find my way into. It's also riffing on the Yakuza/Like A Dragon series of games which similarly sound like my cup of tea, but I've similarly never vibed with. So the whole time I've been bingeing this game, I've been thinking about why it works as well as it does, to the point where I spent an embarrassing amount of time unable to extract myself from its charms.
Paradise Killer had an exquisite sense of style, but once the game itself got underway, the primary gameplay loop of move around, discover items, question suspects, was not compelling enough to see me through to the end, and there really wasn't much else there. That is not a problem in Promise, which has enough variety in its missions and mechanics to let you mostly avoid the stuff that doesn't gel with you for the many other things that probably will. It's an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that works perfectly for the same reason it does in Animal Crossing: You're almost always able to find another little thing you want to do before you log off and before you know it you've spent double digits worth of hours agonizing over the stupid claw machine game they included and your wife is mad because you didn't make anything for dinner or walk the dogs.
The other major influence here — as mentioned above — is the Yakuza games, which share more than a few similarities with Promise Mascot Agency, including casting series mainstay Kazuma Kiryu's voice actor as the lead. The main thing that's kept me away from these games is their heavy reliance on long cutscenes. Every one I tried had multiple ten-plus minute cinematics deployed before I ever got to so much as beat up a single street tough or struggle to stay awake through a boring film the local theater owner wants me to see. Yakuza has the variety, but the pacing is too slow at the start for me to ever get past the intros, let alone sink dozens of hours into each game. Promise doesn't have that issue, getting through its opening and quickly ramping up the activities so you don't have time to second guess your decisions on how you spend your free time. It's also significantly shorter than the Yakuza games, coming in somewhere between 12-17 hours, depending on how early you get the fast travel upgrade that I somehow missed until near the end of the game.
I'm planning on saving a full recounting of my favorite games of the year until early 2026, as there are still a few potential contenders I haven't made it around to playing enough of to decide if I want to talk about them yet, but I'll be surprised if Promise Mascot Agency doesn't wind up close to the top of the list based solely on how good it is at making me forget everything outside of it for hours on end.
